Poll: Half of settlers would evacuate settlements in exchange for compensation

A new Israeli poll indicates that about half of Israeli settlers living illegally in selected areas of the West Bank would evacuate their settlements under a peace agreement with the Palestinians in exchange for compensation.

The comprehensive poll commissioned by the Blue White Future movement, which supports a two-state solution, was conducted last August by the Macro Centre for Political Economics, and finds that 28.8 per cent of the 100,000 settlers living in isolated settlements east of the separation wall would be willing to evacuate their settlements in exchange for compensation, even without a political agreement being signed.

About 40 per cent said that they would refuse to leave even if Israelis voted in a referendum for the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank.

The area where the most settlers are willing to evacuate is in the Jordan Valley, north of the Dead Sea. As for the area with the lowest number of settlers willing to voluntarily evacuate their settlements, they are in the northern parts of the West Bank, where only 19.4 per cent of the population expressed a willingness to leave.

The poll was based on a representative sample of 501 men and women living in selected settlements; however, as Bloomberg News points out, “the survey doesn’t deal with about 250,000 settlers in areas of the West Bank that Blue White Future expects will become part of Israel under a peace deal, or an additional 200,000 who live in parts of east Jerusalem” that Israel has also been occupying since 1967.

This is the latest poll in a series of three, all of which produced very similar findings. The poll also shows that every time a new generation of settlers is created, the willingness to voluntarily evacuate the settlements in exchange for compensation increases. According to the survey results, the three key factors that will encourage settlers to evacuate are suitable compensation (42.6 per cent of respondents), work or vocational rehabilitation (35.6 per cent of respondents), and a viable peace agreement (31.6 per cent).

According to Dr Roby Nathanson, head of the Tel Aviv-based Macro Centre for Political Economics, “The polls show that the settlers have ambitions, like the rest of the Israeli population, and for most of them, these ambitions come in the form of employment, social security, housing and social unity, which to them, are even higher on their list of priorities than ideological motives.”

Gilead Sher, the former co-chief of the negotiations team and chief of staff and policy coordinator to former Israeli Prime Minister and Minister of Defence Ehud Barak, says that “those who live in the areas that will no longer be part of Israel must be given the chance to return to Israel in exchange for compensation even before an agreement is made. This is the duty of a state towards its citizens, and this ethical decision must not be delayed.”

The Blue White Future movement is a Zionist organisation working to create a regional reality made up of two states for two peoples by means of an agreement, encouraging the two sides to take independent measures towards supporting the reality of two states for two peoples. The movement was founded in 2009 by Colonel Gilead Sher and Ami Ayalon.